Shortwave Broadcast Schedules

iPhone iPad App to Display Shortwave Radio SWBC Schedules

Instructions:

Shortwave Broadcast Schedules displays the transmission schedules of shortwave radio stations from all around the world. You need a shortwave radio to receive them.

The stations are initially listed in order by frequency. You can tap a button to see which stations are on the air right now, as well as go back to displaying all station schedules.

Stations currently on the air are displayed in bold, making it quick and easy to see which stations are on right now. When you have selected On Now, the list will update every minute.

Tap on a station to bring up more information about the station, such as the country of origin, target area, and programming language. Tapping on "Schedule for this station", as well as the frequency, country, target, or language will perform a search on that value, making it easy to find all the schedules for this station, as well as all the transmissions from any station on this frequency, from this country, to this target, or in this language.

Tap on Station, Time, or Freq to search by station name, time of day, or frequency.

Tap on Select to select only stations broadcasting from a selected country, to a selected target area of the world, in a selected language, or Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM) transmissions.
By default, all of the transmission in the schedule file are displayed or used in searches. It is entirely likely that there are many transmissions that you are not interested in. Tap "Restrict entries", and you can specify what types of transmissions you are interested in.

First, you can restrict the countries, targets, and languages you are interested in. For example, to control which countries are displayed, tap on "Restrict countries". You are shown a list of all of the countries, as well as an option called Other at the top. Each has a checkmark next to it, showing that transmissions from the country will be displayed. You can uncheck countries you are not interested in.

The Mark All and Clear All buttons make it easy to check or uncheck all the entries. For example, if you only want results from Canada, you could tap Clear all to remove all the checks, then go down and check just Canada.

"Other" is used as a catch all for any transmissions that either do not have a country indicated, or show a country not on this list.

Likewise, you can restrict display to only certain targets or languages.

If you are only interested in certain bands for frequency ranges, you can use the minimum and maximum frequency values to control the displayed results. Values must be in kHz. You can also use the switch to specify that only digital (DRM) transmissions should be shown.

Be sure not to make the settings overly restrictive, or you may end up with no displayed entries. You will get a message to the effect, if that happens.

You can keep track of favorite stations. It's easy, here's how:
- Select a station.
- Tap Add To Favorites at the bottom of the details for the station.
- To see the list of your favorites, tap Select then Favorites.
- Note that when the schedule database file is updated, you may lose favorites for transmissions that no longer exist, or have changed time/frequency.

You can set up reminders for a station. A reminder will alert you when a scheduled transmission comes on the air. Here's how they work:
- Bring up the station details, and turn on the reminders switch at the bottom.
- You can see a list of stations with reminders by tapping Select then Reminders.
- When a reminded station comes on the air, you will get a notification if SWBC Sked is not running, you can tap on it to see the reminder(s) for that UTC time. If you miss the notification, you can tap on Select then Reminders to see all of your reminders, the stations currently on the air will be in bold. If SWBC Sked is running, you will be shown the list of reminders.
- Reminders repeat every day.
- You can use the Enable / Disable button in the Reminders list to turn them on and off.
- You can go to Setup (see below) and specify the number of minutes before the start of a transmission the reminder is issued. This is handy if you want a few minutes head start to get your radio turned on and tuned in.
- Note that when the schedule database file is updated, you may lose reminders for transmissions that no longer exist, or have changed time/frequency.

Tapping on the FAQ button brings up this document. From here, you can tap the Update button, and the app will check to see if there is a more recent version of the schedule. If so, it will be downloaded and installed. You need an internet connection for this to work, of course. Note that if you have "Check for new schedule on launch" enabled under Select, the update button will not appear.

From here you can also tap Setup to bring up these options:

You can enable the option to check for a new and updated schedule each time you launch the app.

You can set the number of minutes before a remind for the notification to alert you. This can give you extra time to turn on the radio, tune in the station, etc.

You can force the latest version of the schedule file to be re-downloaded. This could be useful if your version becomes corrupted.

You can use the feedback button to send us an email if you have a question, suggestion, or bug report. And if you love the app, please considering using the Rate button to give us a review on the App Store. We'd greatly appreciate it!